The Great Mississippi Flood Of 1927

1||The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 caused more than $400 million in damage and killed almost 250 people. Floodwaters spilled over an estimated 27,000 square miles over seven states. More than 700,000 people lost their homes, and nearly half those people were forced to live in displacement camps. Herbert Hoover called it "the greatest peace-time calamity in the history of the country."

The train carrying vice-president Charles G. Dawes and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wrecked near Heads, Miss., on the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad. The engine went into 40 feet of water, killing the engineer, during the flooding in the Mississippi Delta on July 29, 1927.||flickr/jwinfred&&

2||Torrential rain poured on the U.S. for eight months in 1927-1928, starting in the upper Midwest.||flickr/jwinfred&&

20||Relief fleet and personnel of the Mississippi River Flood Relief Service.||.mil&&

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22||From John M. Barry's Rising Tide: ". . . Out on the water there was unimaginable silence. As far as the eye could see was an expanse of brackish chocolate water. There was not the bark of a dog, the lowing of a cow, the neighing of a horse. Even the trees turned dingy, their trunks and leaves caked with dried mud. The silence was complete and suffocating."||.mil&&